


Kindness is the Language

by PockySquirrel



Category: Kamen Rider Decade, Kamen Rider Zi-O
Genre: Background Tsukasa/Yusuke if you squint I guess, Gen, I have headcanons and I'm not afraid to use them, Not at all canon compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:41:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28104120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PockySquirrel/pseuds/PockySquirrel
Summary: In which Yusuke indulges his curiosity, and Sougo gets a pep talk from some other world's Kuuga.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10
Collections: Another Toku Holiday Special (2020)





	Kindness is the Language

**Author's Note:**

  * For [estelraca](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estelraca/gifts).



> The request involved Team Decade discussing the events of Zi-O and Yusuke getting to do stuff for once. My own ideas about how things did or should have happened took it from there. Therefore, I apologize in advance for the weirdness.

It was a flash of shifting color that first alerted Sougo to the other Rider's presence, and then an impact against his shoulder knocked him away from the oncoming blast. Unbalanced, he fell onto his backside. He couldn't see what happened next, whether the newcomer had taken the hit for him or dodged it. But when the smoke cleared, Sougo saw that the enemy had scattered, and that the figure standing over him was strangely familiar. 

The horns. The mandibles. The glyphs etched into his armor. Sougo searched his memory, matching the image to the totems he wore as Grand Zi-O.

"Kamen Rider...Kuuga?"

The Rider turned and looked down at him, confirming his identity with a thumbs-up. His transformation faded, and the man's shaggy haircut and kind eyes weren't quite identical to the ones Sougo had expected. 

He smiled at Sougo's apparent confusion and reached out a hand to help him up. Sougo took it, and picked himself up off the warehouse's dusty floor.

"I am Kuuga," the man explained. "Or a Kuuga, anyway. Probably not the one you thought you'd meet. I don't exactly belong to this world. I guess you could say I'm just passing through."

He chuckled softly as if at some private joke before continuing, "I'm Yusuke. Onodera Yusuke."

"Tokiwa Sougo." Both the reply and the polite bow that accompanied it were automatic, although he suspected Yusuke already knew who he was. 

Sougo had questions. A lot of them. But they would have to wait. 

"I have to help my friends," he said, looking around somewhat frantically as if that would lend him any insight as to what he should do next. 

"I know where they are," Yusuke helpfully supplied. "My bike is outside. We can go together."

Then let's go!" Sougo headed immediately for the exit, practically skidding to a stop when he realized Yusuke wasn't following. 

"I wanted to ask you something first," Yusuke said, his tone soft. "I watched you fight back there. I know you have more power than that. Why not use it?"

Sougo’s hand went to his driver, and his gaze went to the floor. Yusuke watched his reactions with great interest and no judgment.

“I promised my friends I wouldn’t use that power,” Sougo replied. “I don’t want to turn into something that might hurt them. I don’t want to let them down.”

In that moment, the preordained King of Time looked like little more than a frightened child. It was one thing to have been told how young the newest Rider was, and another to see it firsthand. It made Yusuke wonder just what kind of road separated the boy before him from the man he would supposedly become in that harrowing future. A future Sougo himself was now fighting to prevent. Afraid of his own potential, his own power. Afraid of himself. And yet, able to admit that fear to a stranger in the hopes of overcoming it, so he could continue to fight for the things he cared about. For his friends. For a better future. 

Yusuke had liked Sougo from the moment he laid eyes on him, but that was no surprise. Daiki would have rolled his eyes and accused him of liking everyone, and would not have been far off the mark. But the young Rider’s words left Yusuke feeling respect for him as well, and they carried a familiar echo that made him realize what he was doing here. Why coming to this world, meeting Sougo, was important. 

And Yusuke wondered, not for the first time, just what had become of this world’s Kuuga. 

“You know, it’s not what kind of power you use that matters. It’s what’s in your heart when you use it.”

It was exactly the kind of statement his friends would have scoffed openly at him for making, and the kind that made him their friend in the first place. Sougo was at least polite in his skepticism. That was fine; Yusuke knew his place in all of this. 

“You want to help your friends, right?” he continued. “So you’re fighting with love in your heart. Not anger. Not hatred. Love. How can that possibly turn into something evil?”

Sougo seemed to think about it. But he was also antsy, impatient. Wondering, no doubt, what was happening to the others in his absence. That was fine. Yusuke had said what he needed to say.

But there was still something more he could do to make his point. 

“Watch,” he said.

Obediently, Sougo watched. And Yusuke transformed. Reached into the bottom of the well that was Kuuga’s power and pulled up what he knew lay waiting there. Felt the armor wrap around his body and the lightning flow through his veins, familiar, though no more comfortable than it had been the first time he took this form. The one Sougo needed to see. He felt the power rise up and buck, threatening to overwhelm him as it always did, and he grappled it into his control with practiced skill, finding his balance with it. At the end of it, he lifted his hand to deliver another thumbs-up. 

Sougo saw him change, black and gold, shadow and flame. Eyes flickering from familiar red to the soulless void and back again. Witnessed the struggle, brief but profound, violent in its subtlety. 

When Yusuke looked at him again, he could tell that Sougo understood. He smiled under his mask. 

“Let’s go.”

The two Riders sped off to face their next battle, and Sougo never did reach for that power that they both knew was resting at his fingertips. But that was fine. It would be there when it was needed. And maybe when the moment came, Sougo could feel like it was okay. 

***

There was never any finding Tsukasa unless he wanted to be found. So it was no coincidence that Yusuke ‘happened’ to run into him as the sun was setting, long after Sougo and his friends had departed to celebrate their latest victory. He’d found a vacant observation deck from which he could look out over the whole city, evaluating it with a critical gaze, noting all the little details that made it same-but-different from a dozen other Tokyos on a dozen other Earths. 

Yusuke approached without a word and stood shoulder to shoulder with the taller man, leaning into him slightly, sharing his view. Tsukasa neither welcomed nor rebuffed the affection. 

“I met Zi-O today,” Yusuke noted mildly. Tsukasa didn’t seem at all surprised by that, which in turn came as no surprise to Yusuke. They knew each other too well for that by now. 

“And?” Tsukasa prompted.

Yusuke tilted his head, looking up at Tsukasa with a fond, sidelong smile. “And I think I understand now why you’ve taken such an interest in this world. Do you think you’ll destroy it?”

Tsukasa took a long time to answer, weighing his thoughts before giving voice to them.

“No,” he said. “I think I’ll let him do it.”

Yusuke nodded in assent. 

“I wonder what he’ll build in its place,” he mused. 

“It won’t be long before we find out,” Tsukasa replied, making a valiant effort to sound like he didn’t care.

The sky was darkening by now, twilight painting the horizon in streaks of purple and silver. Tsukasa snapped a single photo of the skyline, then turned to walk away. Yusuke followed.

Whatever Sougo ended up building out of the ruins of this world, Yusuke felt sure it would be something beautiful.


End file.
